


Subject to Attacks of Tentacle

by coldhope



Series: discstuck drabbles [8]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Homestuck
Genre: F/F, discstuck, discstuck crossover ficlets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 15:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Lalonde was not having a good day. </p>
<p>For one thing, she'd woken up with a vile headache despite the fact she hadn't had a damn thing to drink the night before. It had meandered around from her left to right temple and then settled behind her right eye, pulsing like a rotten tooth, and then proceeded to send glittering scotomata drifting across her vision. </p>
<p>Then the voices started, and she knew she was in for it. This didn't happen often, thank fuck, but when it did it took <i>ages</i> to get the stains out of the carpet. She curled up and waited for the floor to go soggy and the planes and angles of the room to skew out of euclidean alignment, and somewhere in the very back of her mind admitted to herself that despite the physical unpleasantness associated with her...attacks...there was just a tiny bit of exhilaration in the feeling of raw power flowing through her.</p>
<p>At which point it had all gone <i>weird</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subject to Attacks of Tentacle

Vimes reflected that he really ought to come up with a better method for keeping Carrot the hell out of his, Vimes's, paperwork. He'd come into the Yard with a relatively cheerful mien and had promptly had to spend a good twenty minutes disorganizing Carrot's wretched piles. He had a _system_ , damn it. Pessimal was probably guilty as well. Vimes suspected him of collusion. 

However, he'd finally got all his things back where they ought to be, and Colon had brought him his cup of tea--properly tarry, with the iridescent film on the surface that meant the teapot was back in top condition after the last time Sybil had inflicted a scrub brush upon it--when his door burst open and a very new lance-constable panted at him, wide-eyed. "You've got to come, sir! You've got to come right now! There's tentacles."

Vimes carefully took his feet off the desk and let an eyebrow climb his forehead. "Not my division," he said. "That's the wizards' sort of thing."

"They're already there! The Archchancellor said you were to come at once--ah, I mean, requested your presence, sir." 

"Did he." Ridcully wasn't often known to give orders to His Grace the Duke of Ankh-Morpork. It had happened once or twice, generally involving catastrophes of impressive proportions. "It's not these wretched Alternians again?"

"No, sir. Oh, sir, please, you've got to come, she's taking the Bucket to pieces!"

"Who is?" He hauled himself to his feet, screwed his brown iron helmet onto his head. The Bucket was an unofficial policeman's pub.

"We don't know, but she's got glowing knitting-needles and keeps growling something like 'vodka martini.'"

~

Rose Lalonde was not having a good day. 

For one thing, she'd woken up with a vile headache despite the fact she hadn't had a damn thing to drink the night before. It had meandered around from her left to right temple and then settled behind her right eye, pulsing like a rotten tooth, and then proceeded to send glittering scotomata drifting across her vision. 

Then the voices started, and she knew she was in for it. This didn't happen often, thank fuck, but when it did it took _ages_ to get the stains out of the carpet. She curled up and waited for the floor to go soggy and the planes and angles of the room to skew out of euclidean alignment, and somewhere in the very back of her mind admitted to herself that despite the physical unpleasantness associated with her...attacks...there was just a tiny bit of exhilaration in the feeling of raw power flowing through her.

At which point it had all gone _weird_. 

Some tiresome little men in dresses were waving sticks at her, and it took Rose a little while to focus through the shifting purple-edged shadows and see that they had pointy hats on. Wizards. Little wizards. She reached out a tendril and took one of their sticks away, hissing through her teeth, and flung it across the room--and where was she, anyway, this wasn't where she normally found herself when the horrorterrors took over, it looked like a renfest tavern or something--and sent a jagged bolt of purple lightning from the Thorns after the stick.

This wasn't right. When she'd come through, when her vision had blacked out entirely and then reemerged from darkness with those sliding purple shadows, it had felt strange--stranger than usual. As if the eldritch abominations using her as a channel weren't the ones she normally served. She floated in the middle of the room, her black tentacles coiling and uncoiling, and _really_ needed a drink. 

"What's all this then?" said a dry voice that cut through the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes. The wizards were regrouping, and she could feel that despite their general air of fat-old-man that they had some power, but the new voice distracted her. She rotated on her vertical axis and hissed at its owner. 

"I don't know what you are," he went on, "or where you came from, but you're causing a breach of the peace and I could nick you right now for disorderly conduct and destruction of property. --Archchancellor, is your staff damaged?"

The most exuberantly bearded of the wizards had retrieved his stick and banged it experimentally on the floor. Purple-green sparks fizzled. Rose was aware of a thickening atmosphere of farce. 

"Quite all right, Commander," said the wizard, and she could swear he _twinkled_ at her before shaking back his wide sleeves and sending a bolt of purple-green fire from the stick that hit her full in the chest and sent her flying. Everything spun sickeningly in at least four dimensions at once, and something that wasn't her let go of the muscles of her eyes and throat and slithered back into the void of wherever it had come from. 

"Jolly good show," one of the other wizards said, and the man who'd threatened to arrest her came over and knelt beside her where she lay crumpled at the foot of the wall.

"Now, are you going to give us any more trouble, miss?" he inquired. 

"No," Rose said clearly, in a voice that was recognizably hers again. "I _am_ going to throw up, however."

"Suit yourself," he said, and got out of the way. 

~

Vimes looked across his desk at the young woman, who was currently devoid of tentacles. She was also no longer slate-grey in complexion or hovering in midair. He considered it a net improvement. 

"It's something of a chronic condition," she said, looking back at him with what he thought was surprising self-possession. "I do apologize for the damage to...what did you say that place was called?"

"The Bucket. Mr. Cheese is the owner; I expect he'll have someone bring over a list of what you destroyed. Are you often subject to attacks of tentacle?"

"Now and then. It's usually different; I don't get pulled into other worlds. I think these weren't my regular horrorterrors. What did that wizard hit me with?"

"I've no idea, you'll have to ask him." Vimes was developing a headache of his own. How many more visitors from other worlds was he going to have popping into existence in his damn city? It was _untidy_ , was what it was. "I'm sure he'll want to have a word. You could tell him from me that I'd take it as a kindness if he and his colleagues could get a move on and send the lot of you back wherever you came from, no offense intended."

"The lot of us?" Rose Lalonde asked. 

"The others stayed grey. They also have horns."

Her eyes, which he noticed were an improbable shade of purple, widened very briefly. "The trolls are here too?"

"I believe that's what they call themselves, although here 'troll' means something completely different. You may have seen Detritus on the way in."

"I see," she said, and he realized that tentacles or no tentacles, self-possession or no self-possession, she couldn't be more than sixteen--and she probably felt absolutely bloody. Crossly he fished out his cigar-case and made a business of lighting a Pantweed's Slim Panatella. 

"What am I going to do with you?" he asked, when the cigar was properly lit. "I suppose you'd better stay in the cells for now; you're technically under arrest."

"I don't care," she said, "as long as there's a flat surface I can lie down on and not move for several hours."

"That, I think, is within the realm of possibility."

~

The faculty of Unseen University liked two things more than any other: a) very big dinners and b) arguing. Providently, these could often be enjoyed at once. 

"I still think it was foolish to let the girl go," a particularly large wizard groused. "If she opens another portal to the Dungeon Dimensions we shall all be eaten like peanuts. Remember the business with that awful infant Coin?"

"I doubt any of us has forgotten it, Dean," said the Archchancellor, concentrating on his bottle of Wow-Wow Sauce, which was approaching criticality and had to be handled with care. "Or the incidents with Eskarina Smith and Simon. Or the one that happened while everyone was mad for the clicks. The Patrician is very keen on preventing any further incursions. Ah, there we are."

He set the bottle back in its bucket of ice, taking off the heavy leather gauntlets. "What I'm wonderin'," he said, "is why nothing from the Dungeon Dimensions has tried to get through that way before. And if this gel's arrival has mucked up the patterns of the original hole in reality, Stibbons and that thinking engine of his might have to do their sums all over again to try and get the lot of them back where they came from."

Ponder Stibbons gave a stifled groan. Even with Hex running flat out it had taken days to get the first set of values for the original incursion's thaumic signature. Having to start from the beginning would be a nightmare. The Archchancellor was right: another discrete incursion via the same pathway would interfere with the original signature. He groaned again. 

"Anyway," the Archchancellor was saying, "Vimes arrested her, and the University is not in the business of interfering with the Watch in the pursuit of its duties." He paused. "Five gets you ten that Vimes himself will show up with the gel this very evenin'. Pass the potatoes, Stibbons, there's a good chap."

~

In fact it was midafternoon--just time for a light snack--when Vimes brought her round. Without the tentacles or the blank white eyes, she looked like a perfectly ordinary girl, if somewhat pale and drawn. Stibbons retreated into incoherence and the Dean muttered under his breath until Ridcully stepped hard on his foot. "Quite agree, quite agree," he was saying. "Gel's obviously a magic-user--" he didn't say _witch_ \--"should insist the University take charge of her until we can get to the bottom of this business." Because, among other reasons, the University had the means to contain her if she took it into her head to invite any more horrorterrors in, and the Yard was sorely lacking in binding circles. 

Vimes looked considerably relieved. "Right. Behave yourself, miss."

"I'll try," she said, with a venomous glance. It was difficult not to resent being passed around like a parcel while people made up their minds what to do with her. At least she'd been able to lie down for a while on a perfectly adequate bed, and her head felt a little less like a rotting melon full of cockroaches. 

Vimes removed himself adroitly. The wizards drew Rose into a cavernous hall, so dim after the sunlight outside that for a moment she couldn't see at all, blinking fiercely. As her eyes adjusted she was aware of two things: one, this place _had_ to go in _Complacency_ , and two, Kanaya Maryam was standing right in front of her. 

Rose burst into tears. 

~ 

The trolls were still staying at Unseen University, because nobody could think of anywhere else to put them, and after the faculty had put her through an exhaustive battery of tests and concluded she did not present an immediate danger, Kanaya took Rose to her room. "What _happened_?"

She didn't feel like going over it all again, but just closed her eyes, leaning against Kanaya. "I went grimdark, but it wasn't the ordinary sort--the only thing I can think of is that when it began these other horrorterrors, whatever they call them, Dungeons and Dragons, saw the conduit begin to form and shoved my usual ones out of the way. Which somehow ended up with me getting yanked over to this world, wrecking some awful olde-worlde bar, and being sick all over the floor in front of that guy who looks like a thunderstorm in a helmet. Who then arrested me."

Kanaya rested her chin lightly on the top of Rose's head. "I don't pretend to understand the physics of it all, but they're trying to recreate the portal we came through so that Aradia and I can attempt to send us all back again."

"I think they're worried that I've messed it up," she said. "That you won't be able to go back. I'm sorry."

"Oh, _Rose_." She refrained from giving her a shake, but it was difficult. "This is not your fault. And--well, if we are stuck here, it isn't so very terrible as all that." 

"Are you serious? There's no electricity!"

"They seem to get along very well without it." Kanaya told her about Pepe and Madame Sharn, with whom she had become firm friends, and about the herd of heroes chasing Tavros, and by the time she'd got to the Guild of Fools and Joculators being absolutely pants-wettingly terrified of Gamzee, Rose was laughing. 

"How's Eridan dealing with it?" she asked. "Has anyone buried him head-down in a hole yet?"

"He's given up insisting that magic doesn't exist, at least. I took him to meet Madame and they got on beautifully--she's going to bring out a line of horned helmets with him helping to design, or at least so he claims. Equius is going out for the football team."

"Oh my god." Rose snickered, wrapping her arms tighter round Kanaya. "Now all we need is my damn brother showing up and starting an obnoxious fashion for sunglasses and monotone monologuing. I would pay to see him and that police guy having a stare-off."

Kanaya laughed, a lovely rich sound. "Actually, so would I. --Oh, Rose, is it terrible to say I'm very glad you're here?"

"I'm not up to determining relative moral status just at the moment," said Rose, closing her eyes, safe and held, "but signs point to no."


End file.
